Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has been following the story:
As I wrote yesterday, a big woke fracas is brewing in New Zealand, with the universities and government on the side of the woke, and the science professors (by and large) on the side of the angels. Since my piece appeared, I’ve gotten half a dozen emails from academics in New Zealand, objecting to the University of Auckland’s new policy to teach Maori “ways of knowing”, which include creationism, alongside modern “real” science—and in science class! This all started last summer, and is still going on…
The misguided effort to teach Maori indigenous knowledge as coequal with science will not only confuse the Maori (and everyone else!), but disadvantage those who embrace indigenous ways of knowing. Suppose, for example, that a Maori teenager wants to be a physicist. Well, there are no positions for “physicists doing Maori string theory”; there are only positions for physicists. There is no Maori physics or American physics or Indian physics, there is just “modern physics”.
I also wrote yesterday that seven academics from the University of Auckland wrote a short piece in The Listener (read it here), objecting to the insertion of Maori Matauranga (ways of knowing) into science curricula. Instead of their fellow academics defending them, the “Satanic Seven,” as I call them, have been demonized. Their jobs have been threatened, the Vice Chancellor of Auckland University has said the seven don’t adhere to the University’s “values,” and two of them are being threatened with expulsion from New Zealand’s Royal Society. Jerry Coyne, “The “teach Maori other ways of knowing in science class” fracas continues; Richard Dawkins weighs in” at Why Evolution Is True (December 4, 2021)
World-class Darwinian atheist Richard Dawkins has tried to weigh in. Coyne quotes from Dawkins’s letter to New Zealand’s Royal Society, opposing the move:
I have read Professor Jerry Coyne’s long, detailed and fair-minded critique of the ludicrous move to incorporate Maori “ways of knowing” into science curricula in New Zealand, and the frankly appalling failure of the Royal Society of New Zealand to stand up for science – which is, after all, what your Society exists to do.
The way things are going, Dawkins could get himself Cancelled, along with those New Zealand scientists and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), Darwin’s famous “bulldog.” Coyne offers background on the New Zealand scientists here.
By the way, was this how people like Dawkins got branded at Salon as merging with the far right? On that, see: Woke atheist rejects the New Atheists — not Woke enough Take in for a moment that the editors of an allegedly serious publication actually sponsored an article claiming that all of these prominent atheists have “merged with the far right.” Remember that the next time someone starts caterwauling about the need to suppress conspiracy theories. We can direct them to Salon’s website, for their best convenience…
Sadly, the Darwinians are now learning the value of the very intellectual freedom they have so long denied to non-Darwinians of all stripes.
One wonders when the Woke will get round to Darwin. Then, probably, it’s Einstein, Stephen Hawking and such next… The real losers are young New Zealanders who will get lots of cultural immersion in science class but not much hard science.
You may also wish to read: It Begins At Last… T. H. Huxley, Darwin’s Bulldog, About To Be Cancelled – Other Early Darwinists To Get The Chop Soon?
Coyne is getting more and more tangled up in cognitive dissonance.
Opening school to a wider variety of historical stories is GOOD, no matter which stories are opened right now. After students are exposed to the Maori creation, students will find it much easier to see other creation stories on their own. If they’re never exposed to ANY reality, they will easily reject ALL unofficial stories.
This also applies to CRT. If students hear two crappy theories instead of one crappy theory, they will pick up the notion that history can be seen several ways. Grasping the variability of history is VASTLY more important than memorizing either of the crappy false theories.
Coyne’s own narrow view that only atheists can be scientists, and those like him, have opened the door to their own removal in time. All that should matter is the ability to do the job, which atheists cannot even defend. Anyone who disagrees with them has been shunned.
Coyne objects to teaching the Maori “ways of knowing” because, “The issue is about what is true, what is not true, and how to find the truth.”
But alas for Coyne, ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming Darwinian materialism, and/or ‘Methodological Naturalism’, as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science!
Specifically, Darwinian evolution is based on the philosophy of reductive materialism. A philosophy which holds that only matter-energy, space-time, are real and that everything in the universe can be explained by reducing them down to their most basic ‘material’ components, i.e., atoms, molecules, photons, etc.. etc..
Yet ‘truth’ itself is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence and cannot possibly be reduced to atoms, molecules, photons, etc.. etc..
As UD blogger John_a_designer observed,
i.e. “Truth” can’t be physically measured, but can only be ‘seen’ by the intellect, (by the immaterial mind), and therefore, on the premises of Darwinian materialism, ‘truth’ simply does not exist.
i.e. How much does the concept of ‘truth’ weigh? Can you put the concept of ‘truth’ in a test tube? Does the concept of ‘truth’ give off an electromagnetic spectrum? If so, what are its primary colors? Does the concept of ‘truth’ weigh more in English or in Chinese? How long is the concept of ‘truth’ in millimeters? How fast does the concept of ‘truth’ go? Is the concept of ‘truth’ faster or slower than the speed of light? Is the concept of ‘truth’ positively or negatively charged? Or etc.. etc.. etc… ?..
That entire line of questioning is simply ludicrous! Clearly ‘truth’ is not a material object, and/or force, that we can ever hope to subject to rigorous physical measurement. Clearly ‘truth’ is a property that must be apprehended, solely and exclusively, by an intellect, i.e. by an immaterial mind !
Thus for Coyne, a diehard reductive materialist, who believes he is a meat robot with the ‘illusion’ of free will,,,,
,,, Thus for Coyne, a diehard reductive materialist, to claim that science is about “how to find the truth” is especially ironic. As far as Coyne’s own worldview of Darwinian evolution is concerned with ever ‘finding truth’, (and as the old joke goes), “You can’t get there from here”.
You don’t have to take my word for it, (as Nancy Pearcey pointed out in the following article based on her book “Finding Truth”), Darwinists themselves have, in a round about way, basically admitted that Darwin’s theory cannot provide a coherent basis for the abstract and immaterial concept of ‘truth’
Of related note, since our immaterial minds can discover ‘eternal truths’ about being, and yet our own immaterial minds came into being, i.e. are ‘contingent’, and are, therefore, obviously not eternally existent, then it necessary follows that there must exist an eternal mind which has always existed in which these eternal truths reside. i.e. for ‘eternal truth’ to always exist, the Mind of God must first necessarily exist!
And please note that the preceding argument for God from the existence of eternal truth meshes extremely well with the fact that the ‘eternal truths’ that we discover in mathematics are, via Godel, now shown to be ‘incomplete’, i.e. the ‘eternal truths’ of mathematics are now shown to have a contingent existences, not a necessary existence.
Af supplemental note:
Also of supplemental note:
Verse:
My guess if comes down to votes. Follow the votes.
There are seven seats in the NZ parliament that are elected by the Maori.
The ID crowd is approaching this all wrong. ID would be best served by pow-wowing with the Woke movement in a combined attempt to oust evolution from American culture, to make it a thought crime. Use some strategic thinking here, folks. As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.
Blind watchmaker evolution is a thought crime. ID would be best served by partnering with people who are HONEST about what is and isn’t science.
Dawkins doesn’t understand what science entails. He thinks the nonsensical stories he sells as books are science.
An interesting thought experiment arises from the legacy of Phillip Johnson and the Wedge document. Let’s say that DI’s long-term strategy of stamping out the teaching of naturalism (Darwinism, materialism, physicalism, whatever you want to call it) in public schools comes to fruition. How would the ID folks write the new curriculum? Would they actually “teach the controversy” (as they claim is their current goal) or would they simply wipe evolution out of the educational canon? How would they propose to deal with science illiteracy vis a vis the rest of the developed world under this new concept of science? Have ID proponents even thought this through?
ID is about truth. This implies that 1) it is not about truth and 2) someone or some group controls it.
A basic misconception. So far from the truth that it indicates the commenter has no understanding of ID.
Maori make up about 16% of the population, a little more than Black Americans represent of US population.
I lived in New Zealand for a year. Nearly every major public celebration had whites dressed in Maori traditional clothing and dancing to Maori music.
@chuckdarwin:
Your attempt to tie intelligent design to the foolishness of the Wedge Document fails. Phillip Johnson is neither a prophet, nor an idol to anyone who is interested in the science of intelligent design. Idolworshipping is part of Christianism and Darwinism, not of science.
Evolution is mostly compatible with intelligent design, so you probably wouldn’t change much.
AndyClue
I am neither complacent nor naive enough to ignore the Christian roots of ID and the cynical strategy of the Discovery Institute as it attempts to “secularize” ID. When one of the “rock stars” of ID, Stephen Meyer, this year, publishes a 500-page piece of advocacy titled “Return of the God Hypothesis,” we are not as far removed from “the foolishness” of the Wedge Document as you would suggest.
As far as idol worship, the endless hagiography of Johnson portends that his canonization as the “father of ID” is immanent…
If one is interested in Maori dancing, here is a typical poi dance. I once watched such a dance where over half the women were of European background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt35JAg3aXo
How stupid is this?
ID definitely indicates the existence of a creator. The book cited barely discusses Christianity per se. It does provide evidence that much science arose in Christian Europe and that is widely cited.
But let’s not let truth get in the way of an irrelevant argument.
How many fallacies is ChuckDarwin capable of. He’s lightning up the board with every comment.
Is ChuckDarwin saying God=Christianity? A think a lot of people would disagree.
Has ChuckDarwin just called good science foolishness? He may have a point there given the current ruling elite.
IDC and its supporters are only interested in science insofar as it can be enlisted to support their religious presuppositions. Early science was certainly fostered and encouraged in Christian Europe when it was regarded as a means of revealing the glories of God’s creation. When it began revealing and inferring aspects of the natural world that were increasingly difficult to reconcile with Christian beliefs, unsurprisingly they began having second thoughts.
Jerry/15
The Founding Father of ID, Phillip Johnson, to his credit was quite open about the religious purpose of the movement.
Do you really think that ID proponents here would accept for one moment God being anything other that the Christian God, say, Allah or Vishnu? I think not.
CD, not only is it the case that the wedge document so beloved as a red herring and strawman at Wikipedia of no enduring influence, its meaning was twisted by . . . conspiracist accusation. In fact, though, it is not “stamping out” some innocent little lamb named “naturalism” — doesn’t the -ISM part give a clue, this is ideology here? — that is at issue but rather identifying and duly criticising the substance behind the label. Namely, inherently self-referentially incoherent a priori imposed evolutionary materialistic scientism and associated radical secularist humanism or in some cases outright nihilism. FYI, there are no sacred cows, including those dressed in lab coats. KF
PS: One of the best examples of own goal exposure by tin ear inadvertent admission is the cat out the bag remark by Prof Richard Lewontin as follows:
That’s what you need to defend and it is unsurprising that the involved cognitive dissonance manifests as invidious projection.
PPS: For the world of life, the core design inference is quite simple and based on multiple Nobel Prize winning work. In the cell, we have D/RNA. Such includes alphanumeric code strings, with algorithms, thus language and stepwise goal directed processes, executed through molecular nanotech. All, well beyond 500 – 1,000 bits of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, FSCO/I here on. We have trillions of observations of FSCO/I being created and every time it is by intelligently directed configuration. A glance at the blind search challenge quickly shows why. Further, to get to associated von Neumann kinematic self replication, these all had to be sufficiently in place for the very first batch of generation 1 cells. Language, goal directed stepwise processes, execution machinery involving sophisticated molecular nanotech. Reliably, signatures of design. And absent the ideological imposition and associated lockout, this wouldn’t even be controversial.
Seversky, you have moved into negative credibility territory for cause. Perhaps, you need to ponder Lewontin and issues of cognitive dissonance. As for design advocates, for over a decade here on record, I — being an Evangelical Christian and scientific thinker in my own right — have freely pointed out that from Thaxton et al on, it is recognised that the design of cell based life per empirical evidence does not in itself point within or beyond the cosmos. I have noted that natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] is contrasted with ART-ificial, not just with supernatural. A molecular nanotech lab several generations beond Venter et al can do it. Notice how there is serious discussion of tampering to create enhanced function corona viruses and of adapting the mRNA “vaccines.” I have thought, within the century, our successors will do it. Where there is extracosmic import, is cosmological fine tuning that set up physics that facilitates C-chem, aqueous medium, cell based life. And even there, we are not at an inherently good, utterly wise creator God. To go there, you look at moral government, starting with our rationality and what that says about the necessary finitely remote necessary being root of reality. Which, even then would be the generic God-concept of ethical theism. Beyond, there is considerable working through to get to the grounds of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The design inference stands on its own feet as an empirical matter, it is warranted in its own right. KF
Kairosfocus
The Wedge document is crystalline:
No conspiracy, no twisting, no apologist obfuscation. The document speaks for itself.
The debate has moved either to the Irrelevant Fallacy or to the Distraction Fallacy.
Whether true or not this irrelevant. Why mention it except to distract.
My guess this is also the Fallacy of Omission since you provide nothing. Or is it argument by irrelevant assertion?
Another irrelevant argument. Has nothing to do with whether a creator is probable or not.
Absolutely irrelevant.
Notice the attempt to shift the conversation away from what is being claimed or discussed.
Who introduced Christianity as part of ID? Even if true, it’s irrelevant.
This is an OP about Maoris. ChuckDarwin goes to the same lame approach each time and Seversky follows suit.
seversky:
IDC exists only in the minds of the willfully ignorant. And you and yours aren’t interested in science.
ID traces back to the ancient Greeks. Philip Johnson was not one of them.
I would. And it doesn’t matter what one’s PERSONAL opinion is. If it did then evolutionism would never be allowed in public school classrooms.
Materialism is a failed and incoherent philosophy. Getting rid of it for good would be a good thing for everyone, everywhere.
chuckdarwin:
Except for the FACT that ID’s roots are with the ancient Greeks.
Look, morons, if you don’t like the design inference YOU have ALL of the POWER to refute it! And all you have to do is demonstrate that blind and mindless processes are up to the task! That means all you have to do is actually support your position’s claims, scientifically. Stop blaming us for YOUR failures.
Jerry @11 and 14?
What is your point? We also have Maori engaging in European art forms (symphony orchestra, opera, ballet etc).
NZ’s constitution is founded on a partnership. Our core constitutional document is a treaty between the Maori and the British settlers. This creates a partnership which is at the core of our society, including our legal and governmental system.
Both cultures mix, and benefit from each other’s cultures. (Of course not without problems, but on the whole it works pretty well).
And on the core issue, yes, I agree with Coyne that putting Matauranga Maori in science curriculums is wrong. Pakeha (the descendants of the European colonists) have a learnt a lot, and have a lot more to learn from our treaty partners. But not like this. The academics’ letter sparked a lively debate. But I’m not aware of anyone being threatened with job losses or anything like that.
The point is
You answered your own question.
That is what I was implying. Maori culture is readily accepted by the majority white population.
The irony about all this is that the Maori creation story is nearer to the truth then what is taught in nearly every university in the world.